Module 3e - Describe Core Solution and Mgmt Tools - Best Tools for Managing and Configuring Azure

Question 1

General Knowledge: What’s Imperative vs Declarative Code? LOL

Answer 1

Imperative - tell it how to do shit. Imperative details each step to be performed to achieve a goal

Declarative - tell it what you want and let it do it for you. You detail the desired outcome. This allows for a more robust approach to deployments, provisioning large numbers of resources, reliability, etc.

Question 2

General Knowledge: What are the two (2) broad categories of Azure management tools?

Answer 2

Visual Tools - full visually friendly access to Azure (Portal basically lol). Azure Mobile App as well

Code-based Tools - CLI, Powershell etc. ARM Templates. These are better for repeated use since you can save commands/code

Question 3

What product options do you have for managing and configuring Azure?

Answer 3

Azure Portal
Azure CLI
Azure Powershell
The Azure Mobile App
ARM Templates

Question 4

What is Azure Portal?

Answer 4

The web interface for all of Azure. Great for beginning to use. As you get more comfortable and your needs grow, you’ll likely switch to a programmatic approach

Question 5

What is Azure Mobil App?

Answer 5

iOS and Android access to Azure resources.

• Monitor health and status of Resources
• Check Alerts, diagnose and fix issues
• Remote admin web apps and VMs
• Run Azure CLI or Powershell commands to manage Resources

Question 6

What is Azure Powershell?

Answer 6

A Powershell Module that uses Azure Cmdlets or Azure CLI. Allows you to:

• Setup/teardown/maintain connected Resources
• Seploy infrastructure using imperative code (cmdlets and powershell code)

You can always capture script code for reuse so from a web browser via Azure Cloud Shell

Question 7

Azure Powershell is only available on Windows Systems and on the web via Azure Cloud Shell (T/F)?

Answer 7

False. Azure Powershell available for Windows, Linux and MacOS.

Question 8

What is Azure CLI and what’s the main difference between that and Azure Powershell?

Answer 8

Commandline tools that can be executed in Bash, which call Azure REST APIs. Same capabilities as Azure Powershell, with the only difference being the syntax used, relying on the “az” exe instead of Cmdlets.

Ex:

Get available subscriptions:

• *Azure CLI** - az account list
• *Azure PS** - Get-AzSubscription

List VMS:

• *Azure CLI** - az vm list
• *Azure PS** - Get-AzVM

Output as Table:

• *Azure CLI** - az account list -o table
• *Azure PS** - Get-AzSubscription | Format-Table

Either way, use what is most familiar. Gets you past the learning curve faster

Question 9

What are ARM Templates and what are four (4) features?

Answer 9

Azure Resource Manager Templates. This is the DECLARATIVE option for managing Resources. You define your desired state, let Azure build it out for you.

• Uses JSON (easy to read and understand)
• Creates Resources in parallel (50 instances requested == All 50 are provisioned at the same time)
• Templates can execute Powershell or Bash scripts before/after
• Validation steps can be implemented to ensure proper Resource creation

Question 10

Hint: OonD P I

What three (3) validation points ensure proper ARM Template Resource creation?

Answer 10

• Creation in proper Order based on Dependencies
• Creation in parallel
• Idempotent

Question 11

When you need to repeatedly setup one-or-many Resources along with all their dependencies, which tools are best suited for this?

Answer 11

ARM Templates. Declarative JSON may contain the target Resources and validation steps for Resource creation.

Why not Azure Powershell or CLI? You COULD by scripting everything and saving those scripts, but there are no validation steps right away. Errors while running scripts ==> dependency Resources can’t be rolled back easily, deployments happen serially, etc.

Question 12

When you come from a Windows administration background, when scripting, which tools are best suited for this?

Answer 12

Azure Powershell since it’s Window’s native. However you can get away with Azure CLI as well

Question 13

When you come from a Linux administration background, when scripting, which tools are best suited for this?

Answer 13

Azure CLI since syntax closely resembles that of Bash commands.

Question 14

When you need to perform one-off management/admin/reporting actions, which tools are best suited for this?

Answer 14

Azure Powershell or CLI. Script it, save it, etc. We kind of do this right now with Powershell for TEP administration

Azure Portal and the Mobile App work great too, but for cloud admins it may be less efficient to click around vs someone new to Azure who’ll appreciate the visual presentation

Why not ARM Templates? Templates can be used here as well but are intended to define infrastructure requirements for repeatable deployments

Question 15

Use Case: When executives want to see data displayed visually, run custom reports in real-time and ascertain an idea on cloud-spend, what tool would you use?

Answer 15

Azure Portal. Only place to run reports on real-time data

Question 16

Use Case: When a Windows-based dev team has intranet apps vital to business and require network administration, one-off testing, mgmt tasks and admin tasks in that intranet environment, what tool would you use?

Answer 16

Azure Powershell. Windows native, code-based and can save one-off scripts to repeat in the future.

You could use Azure CLI but since there’s less of a learning curve with their Windows dev and network administration experience going with Powershell

For repeatable tasks, ARM Templates could be the way to go, but these are ONE-OFF tasks, so again we fall back to Powershell (save the scripts for next time!)

Question 17

Use Case: When a Linux-based DevOps Team needs to perform frequent admin tasks, and managing that from Azure Portal is too time consuming and not repeatable, for ONE-OFF tasks, what tool would you use?

Answer 17

Azure CLI since the syntax is similar to Bash syntax.

Not Powershell (though possible) because you want to take advantage of their Linux experience.

For repeatable tasks, ARM Templates could be the way to go, but these are ONE-OFF tasks, so again we fall back to CLI (save the scripts for next time!)

Question 18

Use Case: To alleviate employees from having to convene physically during weekends and holidays for the purposes of cloud administration during busy ecommerce times of the year, what tool would you use?

Answer 18

Azure Mobile App. Since all functionality is available through the mobile app, you can tend to administration and respond to alerts through the app, wherever you have wifi or a cell signal.

Question 19

Use Case: You need to make cloud deployments repeatable, reliable and scalable during peak sales periods. You need to meet the following requirements:

• Ensure efficient and potentially parallelized Resource creation
• Create dependencies in a specific order
• Rollback capabilities in case of failure

What tool would you use?

Answer 19

ARM Templates.

Note you can still run Powershell or CLI for one-off tasks like clean up or configuration, but for the most off, requirements dictate using ARM Templates (dependency creation in order, rollback, parallelization
with provisioning/creating Resources)